A Birdie Day

It was a birdie day all round today. I had some wonderful bird themed birthday gifts, and then we went to the park so I could try out my new point-and-shoot. C upgraded my old one - it was cheaper than buying a tele-converter for my DSLR. OK, so it's a point-and-shoot and that's not going to be the same quality, but it gives me a bit more zoom without losing two stops and needing a tripod - and when I become a bit more proficient, it takes AMAZING videos.
We've been lamenting the fact that this year's robins aren't as tame as last year's, but at least we still have them and they're still relatively fearless compared to the other birds. I even caught a fleeting glimpse of one feeding another yesterday - I heard a familiar insistent chirping and rushed to look.
This was today's robin visit.

After watching the coal tit today, C thinks he was maligning the sparrows in saying they are eating us out of house and home. The little coal tit paid a lot of visits. He picks the sunflower seed from the feeder, and then flies off to somewhere less exposed to open it - sometimes he just flies back to the nest.

Hopefully a very brief video clip of the little coalie. A whole new set of software to learn - luckily I know my sister is great on video editing and I can ask her for help and advice.

We got to see some tufted ducks today - here's a hen and a male.

We didn't see one single deer - just  a couple of squirrels and  rabbits.

Magnolias - again!

I don't think I can ever have too many magnolia photos. They're so early this year, though - already they're almost over, and only a few trees were left at the start of their flowering. I think of them as more a May flower, normally.

Just in time for Easter...

...the first chick of the year. There was only one that we could see in the whole pond, I don't think I've ever seen just one solitary chick before. Usually there's a whole little flotilla paddling along behind Mama Mallard. And this one was tiny, too - C didn't even see it till I pointed it out. He kept calling it a micro-chicken.

I've no idea what came from this egg - it was quite a way from the pond banks, so I doubt if it was the little mallard. But there were no nests that I could see overhead, either.

Feed the Birds

I was meeting my sister in town on Friday afternoon, and it wasn't really worth coming home first. As we finished work exceptionally early maybe it would have been worth it after all, but I had a few things to get - coffee beans, hulled pistachios and so on, and I filled in some of the time in Stephen's Green.

It's been quite a while since I made this. I remember making it once when I was catering for an outdoor activity weekend. There were several vegetarians that particular weekend, and some people who would eat fish but no meat, or chicken and beef but not pork, so the organiser suggested it would be easiest just to go vegetarian. I did offer a fry at breakfast, and I think I may have done a meat option for Sunday dinner, but I made this for the night we arrived, as I had the filling already made. It was very popular.
C had suggested an omelet, but there were tomatoes that needed using up, so I made this instead. For the two of us I halved the filling, but didn't want to go to the bother of halving a beaten egg; we managed to eat almost the entire topping between us.

Mexican Chilli Corn Pie
1 tblsp oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 each green and red (bell) peppers, seeded and diced
1 stick celery, diced
1 tsp hot chilli powder
14 oz can chopped tomatoes
11 oz can (approx) sweetcorn, drained
7 1/2 oz canned kidney beans, drained and rinsed
salt, pepper, t tblsp chopped coriander (cilantro)
Topping:
4 1/2 oz cornmeal
1 tblsp plain flour
1/2 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder
1 beaten egg
6 tblsp milk
1 tblsp corn oil
4 oz grated mature Cheddar or similar cheese.

Heat oil, fry garlic, peppers and celery for about 5 minutes till they start to soften. Stir in the chilli powder, tomatoes, sweetcorn, beans, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and cook for about ten minutes. Add the fresh coriander and spoon into an ovenproof dish.
For the topping, sift all the dry ingredients together into a bowl. Make a hole in the centre, and add in all the wet ingredients (whisk them together first), whisking till just mixed. Spoon over the filling and sprinkle with the cheese. Cook in a preheated hot oven (220C, 425F, Gas 7) for 25-30 minutes, till golden and firm. I think it's better to add the cheese halfway through. Also I use a mix of fine and coarse cornmeal.

A Mixed Bag

I found a couple of flags - one outside the National Museum (Collins Barracks) and one on a hotel further upriver - the Aisling, maybe...

Little and large gulls with the usual junk in the foreground

I only noticed this recently, and yet I must have walked up towards it at least a dozen times this year, even though it's not on my normal route. I think it's the Law Society... it's the piebald effect on the dome that really caught my eye. I must walk a bit further than my regular bus stop and check that out for sure, but I can't think what else would be in that line of view.

Botanic Gardens - Form

This was in the Palm House - it was starting to feel too much like rain in there to take time to look for a plant label, but it reminded me a bit of maranta.

Detail of the Crown Imperial

I could take hundreds of photos of magnolias!!

Botanic Gardens - Colour

When I see forget-me-nots they always remind me of when I worked in a company that imported and distributed fine-art supplies. Myosotis Blue was one of the colours in the gouache range.

There weren't a lot of rhododendrons out in the greenhouse - this was one of them. Just behind it was the jasmine-scented rhododendron - heavenly!!

The current photo challenge on SCS is Show Your Colours, as in flags. Well, I did find a flag during the week, but it was such a still day that it wasn't worth taking a photo of. The stripes in this selection of tulips made me think of a flag, though.

Crown Imperials always remind me of the Little Grey Rabbit books I loved so much - in Little Grey Rabbit's May Day Hare steals some Crown Imperials from a garden in the village for the animals May Day procession.

Sunny Saturday...

In fact it wasn't quite as sunny as the previous couple of days, but still beautiful. I woke early and decided to get up and make some chocolate eclairs for morning coffee and our desserts for the weekend, and then after breakfast we went to the Botanic Gardens. Just as well we left a bit later than normal thanks to the baking - they now don't open till 10 a.m. at the weekend. I tried using a chocolate glaze instead of just melted chocolate - I liked how they came out, but C has requested melted chocolate next time.

Plenty of birds - we saw countless blackbirds, several chaffinches, a moorhen foraging in the grass and even some long-tailed tits, although all I managed to grab was a silhouette photo - they flit around.

I thought I had a saved image of an embroidery of long-tailed tits I did about ten years back  (make that more like twelve or fifteen, on mature reflection!), but I can't find it. I'll have to take a fresh photo tomorrow.


C took the lining out of his coat, and then felt he'd been deceived and deluded  by the sunshine, so we went into the greenhouses for him to warm up a bit. The sprinkler system came on while we were in the Palm House - it almost felt like rain dripping from the leaves. But in fact it can't have been too hot in there, as my lens didn't steam up the way it often does. Two of these photo's are actually C's - the bamboo one, and the one with me in the foreground.

Bird Time

I found it hard to believe that I didn't see one single bird on the Liffey this morning, except for a little grey wagtail flitting up the river ahead of me - no gulls, no ducks, no cormorants. But I did see these gulls in work, and thought the one landing with the open wing worked well for the recent Shades of Grey photo challenge.

There's no doubt about it - while this year's robins are still relatively fearless compared to most of the other species, and will hop around while C is working on his bike, they are nowhere near as people-friendly as last year's. Also they seem to prefer these little fruity suet pellets to the mealworms which last year's robins loved so much. I sometimes see one flying off with a pellet in his mouth, so I suspect it's part of the feeding his mate courtship ritual, but as it's not carried out in the back yard this year, I can't be positive.

And another newbie to the garden - today we had a goldfinch!  In our last house we had so many - there could be over a dozen perched on the washing line waiting to get at the peanut feeder, which is NOT their normal food. I used to spend hours watching them out of the kitchen window. We haven't seen in in the garden here in all the four years we've been here, but last week I hung up a nyger seed feeder, and today we were rewarded with a very interested goldfinch - you can see his beak stuffed with the little seeds. Unfortunately the feeder was out of the sunlight , so I've also used the first photo from when he landed on the seed feeder, even though it's not as well focussed - then he spotted the nyger seeds and spent over fifteen minutes there, with a few brief breaks any time the pigeon patrolling the ground underneath scared him off.

An oddity

 and a semi-preserve is how The Penguin Book of Jams, Pickles and Chutneys describes lemon curd. I've had a hankering for it for a while, and made some last week. The recipe in this book called for the rind and juice of 4 lemons, 4 eggs, 4 oz (half a stick) of butter and 1 lb (2 cups) of sugar. The recipe in Penguin Cordon Bleu Puddings and Desserts called for 2 lemons, 3 eggs, the same amount of butter and half the amount of sugar. I reckoned that less butter to sugar had to be good thing and went with the first recipe. It made three jars, one of which we brought away with us for the weekend.

We're having unscheduled oranges in caramel tomorrow. I was making a risotto tonight, and as there was some rhubarb that needed cooking I put some sugar and water on to boil up to a syrup, and then forgot about it. Luckily I went over to stir the risotto just when it had reached a beautiful rich caramel and before it burnt the pan!